People may have have noticed some themes in my work. I talk about my cats a lot. I rip apart this glorious language of ours. And I talk about Bums. As I paid for my latest performance from Limpy the Vampire Bum, I wondered what I would do in her situation. Not having a chronic foot problem and outward facing teeth. Just being homeless, because it really is sort of a catch 22. You need a house to get a job, because no one wants to hire a person who can’t shower. But you need a job to get a house, because body odor doesn’t accumulate equity. So I ruminated on it, and I struck a solution. But because I have an inherent distrust for my own ideas, I ran it by my fellow Brainlazers, and not surprisingly, I found a dissenting opinion.

The idea is simple, really. What kind of job can you have WHILE you are homeless? It would have to be an out door job. One with flexible hours. There couldn’t be a very large skill set required for the job. Then it came to me. Giving out fliers, duh! Think about it. It is the perfect homeless job. These people are going to be outside bugging people anyway, so why not change the direction of the transaction and validate the whole thing. Suddenly all of the people who are thinking “Screw you, stinky. Get a job” are now just thinking, “Screw you, stinky. Throw this out yourself.” I call that a net gain. Plus, more money in MY pocket. More money in STINKY’S pocket. That’s a win win! There are dissenting opinions, though.

A man we will call Supra decided that my world changing idea was flawed on a fundamental level. A NUMBERED LIST level, in fact.

1. I need to stop giving money to homeless people.
2. Spam of all kinds is bad.

Well, I’ve never been one to pass up a counter point. But since I’ve written two whole essays on the reason I give out money to the homeless, I’ll leave number one alone, except to say that Limpy might be pricing herself out of the biz. As for the spam thing, I’m not suggesting that we give all of the homeless fliers. I’m suggesting that instead of giving fliers to the people they give them to now, give them preferentially to the homeless. He suggested that perhaps this would lead to roving bands of renegade ex-flier-hander-outer revenge squads taking down homeless people, but I submit that that would only accelerate the solving of the homeless problem. This did not placate Supraman. Instead, he proposed an alternate solution, and it is equally eloquent.

Two steps. Compress 10,000 homeless people into bricks. Build a house for a homeless person out of them. Hardly needs a paragraph to itself, really… yeah.

It isn’t a bad idea. Like mine it is efficient, but I prefer mine. For one, in his idea mass murder is necessary. In mine it is just a happy coincidence. But mainly there’s the seagull problem. Sure, Hoboblox ™ are a cost effective and attractive building material for today’s architect on the go, but they are also delicious and nutritious for sea fowl. That would be super annoying for the formerly homeless people who would live there. Then they would move out again and, well, we’re back to where we started… only with a 10,000 fold decrease in the homeless, a lot of blood on our hands, and some really fat seagulls.

That ought to be enough philanthropic discussion for today. You can’t solve ALL of the world’s problems in one sitting. What would you do tomorrow? But at least I can sleep well knowing that I’ve set the world on the path to solving homelessness once and for all. That is, of course, assuming that one of you readers is in charge of a large print advertising firm in a population center plagued with homelessness and are willing to give my idea a try, which would work wonderfully and thus catch on as a global phenomenon. And really, at this point that’s a relative certainty, right? So sit tight, Limpy, help is on the way… but stop calling me Snoogy. I don’t know why, but getting a nickname from a bum concerns me…

About Decoychunk

Editor, Writer, and general Knower-Of-Words, if there is text to be read on BrainLazy, Joseph Lallo probably has his fingerprints on it. As the final third of the ownership and foundation of BrainLazy, Joseph “Jo” Lallo made a name for himself when he lost the “e” from his nickname in an arm wrestling match with a witch doctor. Residing in the arid lowlands of the American Southwest, Joseph Lallo is a small, herbivorous, rabbit-like creature with the horns of an antelope. He sleeps belly up, and his milk can be used for medicinal purposes.
Joseph Lallo is also author of several books, including The Book of Deacon Series, book 1 of which is available for free here.

Phawx Plays Video Games

Message from server: Gone. Check in YouTube if the id ThePhawx belongs to a user. To locate the id of your user check the FAQ of the plugin.